Posted on 03/11/2007 10:05:22 AM PDT by SmithL
When the great Easter Bunny hullabaloo hit Walnut Creek, it took nearly everyone by surprise.
Surely, city officials thought, this couldn't last. It would all blow over once people realized that they hadn't banned Easter, just renamed their annual kids' event a "Spring Egg Hunt'' rather than an "Easter Egg Hunt.''
"Honestly,'' Walnut Creek spokesman Brad Rovanpera said this week, "with all the things in the world to worry about, people are coming unglued over this?''
They are. And the reaction speaks less to the controversy about religion in the community -- it's just a rabbit, after all -- than the media's inclination to play into the simmering anger and resentment among Americans who are convinced their rights and privileges are being taken away.
In this case, you could call it a "hare-trigger'' reaction.
Walnut Creek resident Michael Runzler wrote a letter to the editor complaining about "banning the Easter Bunny,'' and when it ran last week in the Contra Costa Times, the response was immediate.
"I heard from two Fox TV news shows in New York, KGO (news radio), Channel 7 (the ABC affiliate) and The Chronicle,'' Rovanpera says. "I did most of the interviews, but I turned down Fox in New York. They wanted me to go to a studio in Oakland on Sunday, and I never miss '60 Minutes.' ''
And who would have thought that would be just the start of it? This week, Runzler appeared on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" national news show, clips from which were then picked up by "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Ah the true meaning of Easter!
What a liar. With all the things in the world to worry about, why did the city bother renaming it if they didn't have an anti-Christian agenda?
BTW, in saying that, our family celebrates "the Day of Resurrection" and doesn't have anything to do with Ishtar's egg or spring fertility symbols.
I never miss it, either, and I haven't seen it for over 25 years!
;^)
Briefly assuming my picky, picky, rumdummy personna, that's not Mercury on the mercury dime. It's some other winged mythical person whose name I can't immediately recall.
And the rest of the days of the week (Sun's day, Moon's day, Tyr's day, Wodin's day, Thor's day, Frieda's day, Saturn's day).
Isn't Easter derived from a pagan word anyway?
This guy can't be that dumb. He's got to be a liar. He didn't expect any reaction? Where has he been for the past twenty years while politicians fought over Christmas trees?
...and Saturday is named for the Roman god Saturn.
You're right (and I always thought it was Mercury on the Mercury Dime!)...
From Coin Resource .... "One thing its design does not depict, however, is Mercury, the messenger of the gods in Roman mythology. The portrait on its obverse is actually that of Liberty wearing a winged cap symbolizing freedom of thought. Thus, the coin more properly is known as the Winged Head Liberty dime. But the misnomer "Mercury" was applied to it early on and, after many years of common usage, has stuck."
Here's what the Etymological Dictionary says:
Easter
O.E. Eastre (Northumbrian Eostre), from P.Gmc. *Austron, a goddess of fertility and sunrise whose feast was celebrated at the spring equinox, from *austra-, from PIE *aus- "to shine" (especially of the dawn). Bede says Anglo-Saxon Christians adopted her name and many of the celebratory practices for their Mass of Christ's resurrection. Ultimately related to east. Almost all neighboring languages use a variant of L. Pasche to name this holiday. Easter Island so called because it was discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722.
But I would add that one of the biblical Names of Jesus is Oriens. He is the Sol Justitiae, the Sun of Justice who rises with healing in His wings, in the East. And that's also why churches traditionally are oriented toward the East.
It's pagan, perhaps, but that's only because pagan religions had some natural sense of the rhythms of human life, the natural calendar to which human life moves. Christmas is near the winter solstice, when the season turns back toward light and life; Easter is in the Spring, the time of rebirth.
That too is biblical, the post-flood rhythm of the cycles of human life, "seedtime and harvest."
So you can see why the government was in a hurry to change it.
It's okay, we're not homonphobes.
And Tuesday was named after Tuesday Weld, who was smoky hot in her day.
If he is a political I wouldn't bet on it.
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Email to: rovanpera@walnut-creek.org
The Easter Egg Hunt is now The Spring Egg Hunt.
The Easter Bunny is now The Spring Bunny?
Please advise as to when you are changing Easter to a Monday Holiday, I need to mark my calendar.
Tuesday's Gone...with the wind (obscure Lynard Skynard reference)
Says it all, really.
Plus Walnut Creek, California is on the red left coast.
That speaks volumes.
Where did you get the five years?
> He's got to be a liar. He didn't expect any reaction?
Since there wasn't one for FIVE YEARS after the change was made, he was almost right, eh?
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